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When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If

When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days (see [1] for a taste). On mobile many websites are completely unusable because of ads. [1] https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/185666?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/185666?hl=en

bcook 11y ago
I must disagree. Some ads do introduce me to new things that I am truly interested in.
- pc86 11y ago
  The percentage has unfortunately decreased precipitously with the prevalence of retargeting.
- gardano 11y ago
  Other than Ghostery, I guess my ad blocker is myself. If I see anything that resembles an ad, I avert my eyes. I suppose something subliminal is at work even so, but I imagine there are many more people like who just avoid even donating their eyeballs to an advertisement.
boomzilla 11y ago
There is value in advertising: as an information source and a mechanism to establish trust. The former value has been diminished by the internet (which some people call the information age). Advertising is still valuable for establishing trust between the two unknown parties though. Ads in Google work partly because of Google the brand name. Ads on Reddit r/HateSomething will not because, well, you know why. So it's in Google's interest to have good and safe ads (or the perception that they do).
- kaybe 11y ago
  There is value in advertising for me when I do not know where to buy something I need, or what I need. That however is almost never true for consumer goods, only tech things we need for science. Heck, just knowing the suppliers puts you in some kind of secret club sometimes.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  Trust? TRUST? I'm sorry, but are you saying that if I pay to have a claim that my product is best broadcast into everyone's eyeballs or ears, I'm establishing trust? Allow me to repost a previous comment of mine[1]: Whenever a debate about advertising pops up on HN, many people defend it as the necessary way for consumers to find out about good products. Healthy free markets depend on informed consumers, but to think that advertising results in informed consumers makes little sense. I find it strange that a community of logic and science oriented people can hold such a notion. When communities were small, reputation was king. If your town had two bakers, everyone knew which one was good and which one sucked. No amount of advertising would fool the townsfolk into going to the sucky one. But this doesn't scale to huge cities with tens, hundreds or thousands of choices. We can't know the reputation of such a wide array, and we can easily be fooled by advertising. Internet-based recommendation systems make the grapevine and reputation scalable. I hope we see more innovation. Yelp is a start, but it fails miserably because if I rate a place 5 because I love very authentic Thai food, and another person rates it a 1 because they are used to Americanized Thai, the restaurant gets a 3 (I'm simplifying for illustrative purposes). In other words, Yelp's rating is useless to both me and the other person. I'm hoping for a future where recommendation systems and collaborative filtering get so good that they render marketing and advertising useless. - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  My trust in a product and company is usually inversely proportional to the amount of ads they run. The more one is aggressive with their ads, the less I trust them.
  - fixermark 11y ago
starshadowx2 11y ago
>If I want something, I will get it And what are all the ways you can discover things you want? I'd say the top two for most people are word-of-mouth and advertising.
- Sir_Substance 11y ago
  If you shove it in my face, it's not me discovering what I want, it's you telling me what I want and hoping I go along with it. Gets really fucking old when hundreds of people do it to me every day. Advertisers: please piss off and let me discover the world on my own.
  - assocguilt 11y ago
    No comment on Turing then?
    - Sir_Substance 11y ago
      Wow, I have never seen this bad a case of internet-mad. Upvote for persistence!
- eric_the_read 11y ago
  I search for reviews from people I trust, compare the results, and decide on an option. I can't think of the last time I discovered anything I wanted from advertising with the possible exception of movie trailers.
  - starshadowx2 11y ago
    Even before the point where you look for reviews. Like the moment where you learn a product even exists, and you decide you might want to get it. That's the role advertising fills. I agree with you on the second part. I block all ads on all computers I use, so they're pretty useless to me, but I still understand why they exist and the job they do.
- wmeredith 11y ago
Tyr42 11y ago
For example, I turn adblock off for Penny Arcade, since they actually vet the games before they run ads for them. I've found a few games that were actually pretty fun from there.

bcook 11y ago

I must disagree. Some ads do introduce me to new things that I am truly interested in.

pc86 11y ago
The percentage has unfortunately decreased precipitously with the prevalence of retargeting.
gardano 11y ago
Other than Ghostery, I guess my ad blocker is myself. If I see anything that resembles an ad, I avert my eyes. I suppose something subliminal is at work even so, but I imagine there are many more people like who just avoid even donating their eyeballs to an advertisement.

boomzilla 11y ago

There is value in advertising: as an information source and a mechanism to establish trust. The former value has been diminished by the internet (which some people call the information age). Advertising is still valuable for establishing trust between the two unknown parties though. Ads in Google work partly because of Google the brand name. Ads on Reddit r/HateSomething will not because, well, you know why. So it's in Google's interest to have good and safe ads (or the perception that they do).

kaybe 11y ago
There is value in advertising for me when I do not know where to buy something I need, or what I need. That however is almost never true for consumer goods, only tech things we need for science. Heck, just knowing the suppliers puts you in some kind of secret club sometimes.
eevilspock 11y ago
Trust? TRUST? I'm sorry, but are you saying that if I pay to have a claim that my product is best broadcast into everyone's eyeballs or ears, I'm establishing trust? Allow me to repost a previous comment of mine[1]: Whenever a debate about advertising pops up on HN, many people defend it as the necessary way for consumers to find out about good products. Healthy free markets depend on informed consumers, but to think that advertising results in informed consumers makes little sense. I find it strange that a community of logic and science oriented people can hold such a notion. When communities were small, reputation was king. If your town had two bakers, everyone knew which one was good and which one sucked. No amount of advertising would fool the townsfolk into going to the sucky one. But this doesn't scale to huge cities with tens, hundreds or thousands of choices. We can't know the reputation of such a wide array, and we can easily be fooled by advertising. Internet-based recommendation systems make the grapevine and reputation scalable. I hope we see more innovation. Yelp is a start, but it fails miserably because if I rate a place 5 because I love very authentic Thai food, and another person rates it a 1 because they are used to Americanized Thai, the restaurant gets a 3 (I'm simplifying for illustrative purposes). In other words, Yelp's rating is useless to both me and the other person. I'm hoping for a future where recommendation systems and collaborative filtering get so good that they render marketing and advertising useless. - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290
TeMPOraL 11y ago
My trust in a product and company is usually inversely proportional to the amount of ads they run. The more one is aggressive with their ads, the less I trust them.
- fixermark 11y ago

starshadowx2 11y ago

>If I want something, I will get it And what are all the ways you can discover things you want? I'd say the top two for most people are word-of-mouth and advertising.

Sir_Substance 11y ago
If you shove it in my face, it's not me discovering what I want, it's you telling me what I want and hoping I go along with it. Gets really fucking old when hundreds of people do it to me every day. Advertisers: please piss off and let me discover the world on my own.
- assocguilt 11y ago
  No comment on Turing then?
  - Sir_Substance 11y ago
    Wow, I have never seen this bad a case of internet-mad. Upvote for persistence!
eric_the_read 11y ago
I search for reviews from people I trust, compare the results, and decide on an option. I can't think of the last time I discovered anything I wanted from advertising with the possible exception of movie trailers.
- starshadowx2 11y ago
  Even before the point where you look for reviews. Like the moment where you learn a product even exists, and you decide you might want to get it. That's the role advertising fills. I agree with you on the second part. I block all ads on all computers I use, so they're pretty useless to me, but I still understand why they exist and the job they do.
wmeredith 11y ago

Tyr42 11y ago

For example, I turn adblock off for Penny Arcade, since they actually vet the games before they run ads for them. I've found a few games that were actually pretty fun from there.